A wonderful cast and crew got together on Friday, February 14 through Sunday, February 16 at the Palace Theatre to perform “The Vagina Monologues.” The play was directed by sophomores Charity White and Victoria Tarantino, and the production managers were sophomore Providence Ryan and juniors Natasha Torres and Tatiana Sanabria.

The original “Vagina Monologues” play was written by playwright and activist Eve Ensler in 1994. The play was based directly off of dozens of interviews that Ensler had previously conducted with various women of different ages, races and sexual orientations. It addresses the sexuality of women and the social stigma that is widely associated with the ideas of abuse and rape. After five years of running off-Broadway in New York City, “The Vagina Monologues” toured all over the United States, where women with their own stories to share joined to watch the amazing performance. Ensler soon realized that “The Vagina Monologues” was not just a play about violence, but rather a tool for people all over to move to end the abuse.

Before the play began, there was an hour-long “Clit-Tail Hour,” where various actresses shared pieces of their own work about sexuality. Many of these women had written poetry or stories about their own experiences or those of someone they know. These moving pieces were accompanied by drinks and cupcakes followed by a musical performance and dance.

The play was made up of a variety of different monologues, each of which was surrounded by either humorous or solemn facts and skits about female sexuality. All of the monologues told the stories about the women that Ensler interviewed.

The play had an enormous cast, so much so that there were often two or three people assigned to the same monologue. These people would each perform the monologue on different nights, creating what seemed like an entirely different show every evening. Whether the monologue was serious or lighthearted, each actress brought her own take to her performance.

The actresses involved in “The Vagina Monologues” were absolutely fantastic. There were so many excellently and cleverly performed monologues that it became almost impossible to choose only a few to explain in this article.

“The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy” was a particularly brilliant monologue done by the fantastic actress senior Betty Anderson. I would be very surprised if there were one person in the entire theater who was not laughing during her performance. Several more that stood out were “Because He Liked to Look at It” (about a surprisingly good sexual encounter), “I was There in the Room” (about the miracle of birth), “My Angry Vagina” (about women at the hairdressers complaining about things such as tampons) and “The Flood” (a surprisingly profound monologue based on an interview with an older woman).

All in all, “The Vagina Monologues” was a wonderful performance full of dedicated actresses. If you did not get a chance to check it out this year, I would definitely recommend you attend the performance next year. It was quite a memorable experience and all proceeds from the performance were donated to the Victims of Violence program in Utica, N.Y.